“The modern national Republican party is a hot mess, a simmering pot of angry reactionaries driven by selfishness and willful ignorance, whose guiding star is not governance but power, and whose policies and practices are tuned to build an oligarchy, not nurture a democracy”.

Living as I do in a very “red” state, I go to the polls tomorrow knowing that my vote in the presidential race is worth nothing. Oklahoma’s electoral votes are “winner take all”, and this state hasn’t backed a non-Republican candidate for president since LBJ won here in 1964. That’s a very long streak of stupid, so I’m used to none of my choices ever getting the benefit of my vote.

My very first presidential vote was cast for John Anderson in 1980, largely for his proposal to put a (gasp!) 50 cent a gallon tax on gasoline, that and his honest regret over backing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (he was the only candidate with the balls to say it had been a very bad idea). He got my vote, wasted or no.

I joined the GOP for several years to agitate for abortion rights while Reagan was in office, but the GOP was just too crazy for me even then. At the county level they barred motions from the floor of the convention just to keep rights advocates from ruining their little nazi christian soldier routine. I couldn’t stand it any more and I left.

Of course, nowadays neither Nixon or Reagan would make it in the GOP: they’d both be branded as socialists by the crazies in the base and the Koch brothers wouldn’t give either of them a dime because, as bad as they both were for the country, neither of them would be as willing to completely roll over for corporate interests like the current crop of soulless, back-stabbing traitors like Boehner, Cantor, Ryan and McConnell. Ass-clown corporate sell-outs, all. Country will never come first for this venal gang. And “the base”? It’s like something from a George Romero movie: brain-dead zombies as far as the eye can see, wanting to take their country back… to the 1900s, apparently. I never imagined so many could be so dumbed down in my lifetime.

So, yes, I had hoped for more “change”, but in the face of the zombie hoards and bitter partisan obstructionism from the GOP, Obama has done all he could and will get my vote again.

Sure, he’s turned into centrist (there are no radical presidents allowed that aren’t Republicans) and shovelled money at banks and Wall Street, but faced with the fallout from Dubya’s eight year fiasco what else could he do, let the country go bust?

I like “Obamacare”, it’s a step toward single-payer (which is the only thing that makes sense), I appreciate the tax reductions that the GOP will pretend didn’t happen, and I like his actions on equal rights and nondiscrimination (the Lilly Ledbedder Act, getting rid of DADT, starting to move on immigration reform), all against incredible opposition from the GOP zombies that would rather have the country fail than have any Democrat re-elected… soof course Obama will get my vote again, and gladly! Fuck the GOP and all they stand for: they act like villains and I’ll treat them like villains.

I’ll also be voting for John Olson in the House Dist. 1 race. The GOP is running Bridenstine, a hard right wingnut Tea Party goofball that wants a 30% “flat tax” that would eviscerate the middle and lower income earners, and has a hint of Hitler youth about his that I don’t like, policy questions all aside. Oklahoma’s oh-so-straight GOP droids and gun nuts seem to like his pretty mouth and the churchy noises he makes, so he’ll probably win by an unholy margin, but I won’t be voting for him.

In the State Rep race, I’m backing David Phillips, mostly because I’ve seen and heard incumbent Jadine Nollan’s act for the last few years in office and I’ve had enough of her whacko bullshit. She’s part of the Crazy Caucus that voted for the so-called “personhood amendment” to the state constitution, so she’s got to go. I want a representative that thinks for a change.

Most of the referenda on the ballot are easily sorted out. I’m voting NO on State Questions 758 and 759. Anything with the names Ritze, Kern or Shortey on them earns my opposition. These three are part of the Crazy Caucus.

I’m voting YES on State Questions 762, 764 and 765. Changes to the state pardon & parole board, water and sewer infrastructure bonds and making changes to the Department of Human Services management all sound like good ideas to me.

I’m voting NO on State Question 766. It exempts all intangible property from ad valorem taxation, which sounds like bad policy and a give-away to corporations and the “one percenters” to me. There are already specific exemptions for certain classes of intangibles in place; we can selectively add more if we need to. We shouldn’t be exempting everything with a broad brush.